Next time we meet, I'm throwing rocks. Hard pointy ones.

6/15/2002

I flew back into Boston Friday night, into cold and rainy weather. The man who was seated next to me in coach symbolized everything that I think is wrong with the world, and really wanted to talk to me, and I couldn’t bring myself to be rude or mean to him. I had spent too much time with my Grandparents in the previous week, and so I couldn’t muster the sharp tongue I often have when confronted with things I dislike.

This guy who was next to me had no business being in coach. He was on his way to a wedding on The Cape. He told me he excavated man made lakes in Florida, and built waterfront properties around them (this is the very thing that’s fucking up the Florida ecology; all of Florida is meant to be a watershed, a tidal swamp, the Eastern seaboard’s filtration system). Then he asked if I didn’t mind him spreading out a little bit; see, he had the plans to his new 2 million dollar home with him, and the landscaper needed his approval on a few things. His family was from South Boston, but he lived in Miami. He had bloody marys during the flight, and let me know he agreed with “you southerners” on some of our ideas regarding black people. I just stared at him. And I thought about throwing rocks through the window of some of his housing developments. I thought about the wonderfully satisfying crashing sound the stones would make as the glass smashed, and how it would at least ruin one day for him.

This is me, Ms. Nonviolent Action here.

But this guy didn’t know whom he was sitting next too. He assumed that because of the college I attended in Boston I would agree with him in his viewpoint. He didn’t travel with me for two weeks around the south as I visited my family, who has never had much money and has even less this year than we’ve ever had in a long time. He laughed when I told him my carry on luggage was full of 30 pounds of produce, and wasn’t aware that my family gave me food because they can’t give me money. Mr. Man Made Lake, I wish I had asked you for your business card. I would have written you a letter today, as I sit surrounded by all my bills and my decision to leave the north. Mr. Man Made Lake, you’re killing the swamps, you’re the reason I think Miami is the seventh layer of hell, and you presume too much about me. Why a 2 million dollar home? Wouldn’t a million dollar home be enough for you? How about a $500,000house? No, of course not. You’re a subdivision developer who lives in Miami. Not everyone who is educated is an asshole. You are, but I’m not.

Last week, after Kati and I drove back from Knoxville, Underdown hijacked me and took me to eat dinner at La Siesta in Murfreesboro. Andrew was there, and we hugged on each other some; what a rotten year it’s been for everybody. I spent one more night in Nashville with my sisters, and then I hopped a plane to see my Grandparents in Glynn County, Georgia.

When I first stepped off the plane, my lungs fought the water in the air for the first time in my life. It made me laugh; I’ve never had problems breathing the deep summer steam of my native state before.

I spent Sunday on Jekyll Island, Monday in Brunswick, Tuesday in Savannah. Wednesday I left my Grandmother’s and went to see my Grandfather’s family (my mother’s parents divorced over 30 years ago). That night in a tiny dip in the road known as Bell Hammock, my Grandfather and his fiancé Alberta “just threw together a little something”; a dinner of fried shrimp, boiled shrimp plain, boiled shrimp spicy, fried brim, fried zucchini, green tomatoes, and a little yellow squash. My Grandfather elbowed me at the table and made our oldest family joke, with a big flaky delicious piece of brim on his fork: “Hey, wonder how the poor folks is eatin?”

I smiled around a slice of green tomato and all three of us laughed. Nah, there’s no money at all, even for me, the one who got the education. Still none of us is ever going to starve. Everyone in the extended family has a garden plot, and they all swap produce; in the salt marshes there are enough fish in a variety that never ceases to amaze me. The men don’t always get their limit of two deer each a season because there’s no need. Two or three deer will feed everyone in Bell Hammock for the whole four-month cold season. This food makes up for the fact that everyone has low paying jobs on the shrimp boats or at the grocery store or teaching school or cleaning houses or nursing. There are a little over a dozen houses and trailers together on a stretch of rural road filled with families that I’m related to one way or another, and they all watch out for one another.

Still a bad year is a bad year; the government has asked people who catch Blue Crabs to throw back the sponges (sooks, the lady crabs with their shells off) back this year, and the smaller ones too; the numbers of my favorite seafood are down. A lot of people who would normally buy their food at the store have been fishing for dinner, and crabs are easy to catch. The family store of preserves was lower than I’ve ever seen it.

My father’s main competitor in Nashville went out of business, and there are a hundred other things I could talk about that I saw on my trip. I’m happy to be back in Boston, even if the weather is ass again. My days here are numbered because of my lack of money, but I’m going to make the best of it. I love this town. I wish it had never spawned Mr. Man Made Lake, but what’s done is done, and I suppose there’s nothing to be done about it.